


Like A Kicked Puppy

by StrawhatsAndDelibirds



Category: One Piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-19 11:44:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13123059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrawhatsAndDelibirds/pseuds/StrawhatsAndDelibirds
Summary: The battle's lost the moment you underestimate your opponent.





	1. Chapter 1

Sanji had finally had enough. He knew Luffy was hungry a lot, but it was getting to the point where he was starting to wonder if he was doing things like this because he was actually hungry, or if it was because he was bored and just wanted to see if he could and/or fill the void left by boredom with food. 

 

Either way, cook or not he had to put his foot down. If Luffy wanted some food at this time of day, he was going to have to bring him something to cook. It was okay to sometimes let Luffy have some treats, because he’d let everyone on the crew have an odd treat when he was making them, but it was getting to be too much too often. 

 

Sanji was working on more calorie rich, nutrient rich meals, but as it was it was hard to get both. But once he could get both to the level they needed, then maybe he could indulge Luffy more often. Not a moment sooner. 

 

While he was working on ways to make this perfect, he was also going to have to find ways to dissuade Luffy from bothering him for food. Physical pain would only go so far, because you forcing him out only made him stronger and more annoying. Words meant nothing to him, because no matter how hard you bargained, or how rude you got, you were never going to win against Luffy. 

 

That left one tactic left. It was underhanded and risky, but Sanji was going to give it a shot. Sanji was a pirate, so he was allowed to pull underhanded moves, and he didn’t really have much to lose because worst case scenario, Luffy got snacks. It was frustrating but it was better than just trying nothing. 

 

At this point all he had to really do was to wait for that muffled sound of flip flops slapping as Luffy ran to the kitchen. After dealing with Luffy for a year it was one of those sounds that you just became super attentive of. Like the timer on the oven, that he could hear at any spot on the Sunny and just like when he was still on the Baratie. 

 

It didn’t take long for Sanji to hear the sound of Luffy running. He put his elbows on the counter, and waited for the door to swing open. He slowly started to lower his face down towards his hands, as he watched the door. 

 

As he predicted, the door swung wide open because he was pretty sure that that was the only way Luffy knew how to open doors. He wish that it was possible to teach his captain things, but he knew that was never going to happen so he wasn’t going to bother. 

 

He’d quickly hide his face in his hands and sniffle. He wasn’t going to look at Luffy, he wasn’t even going to say anything until Luffy asked him what was wrong. This wasn’t something he was great at, but he’d give it a shot. 

 

As planned, Luffy came over. He didn’t say anything, but he looked him over, walking around him as he tried to figure out what was wrong. Luffy poked him a few times, so Sanji sniffled louder. It might’ve come off as more dramatic than he meant, but it was fine. Sometimes you really had to spell things out for Luffy.

 

“Hey Sanji, what’s wrong?”

 

Sanji sniffled a few times, before he “collected” himself enough to speak

 

“Yeah, it’s just tough sometimes making sure that we have enough food with all the snacks. And sometimes I just get really tired of cooking.” Which the first part was partially true, they did blow through food pretty fast, but there was almost always fishing happening, and they always seem to make just enough money to have enough for food when they got to port. And the second part was just for dramatic effect. It was hard to get tired of doing something when your audience was really appreciative. 

 

“Sanji, are you crying?” There’s the question he was looking for. Here’s where he was really going to knock it out of the park.

 

“No.” He made his voice squeak, much like you’d do if you were actually crying. 

 

Then he started hearing sniffling that wasn’t his. This was a worst case scenario he hadn’t taken into account: Luffy getting so upset by this that he cried.

 

Now admittedly his captain was a little bit of a cry baby. But even so, there was a huge difference between something stupid making him cry, and you being the reason that he’s crying. The main reason was that the first one you could kinda just brush off because that’s just how things were sometimes, but the second was almost deadly when it came to guilt. Luffy was an asshole, sure, but he was also a good guy and someone that almost everyone cares about.

 

Rubber arms wrapped around him, and now he might actually cry. 

 

“I’m sorry Sanji! I didn’t mean to bug you for food all the time!” He could hear Luffy’s voice cracking, and his heart was cracking along with it. Fucking goddamn shit.

 

“Alright, I’ll make you something.” He pushed the sobbing rubber man and his guilt away from him.

 

“Are you sure it’s okay?” Now he was just going to feel like an asshole about this the whole day.

 

“I wouldn’t have offered if it wasn’t. Now sit down and shut up. I’m gonna make you something.”


	2. Chapter 2

Zoro had watched the whole thing go down. It was hard not to when the door had been kicked open. He needed to be alert in case Luffy got tossed at him because some mistakes could only be made fourteen or so times before you actually had to do something about it because it was painfully clear that this in fact could not classify as training and it was just you getting your balls smashed in by your captain’s elbows, knees, or ass.

 

Even if this did end up being Sanji being out maneuvered by Luffy, it was less Luffy getting launched out of the kitchen that he was worried about, and more Luffy landing on Zoro for a post food nap. This was the life he had to live because he was the one who knew all the best spots to nap. The price of admission for good nap spots was either vigilance or sore balls. He’d be a liar of he said that it wasn’t in fact a fair deal.

 

He had to give the cook props for at least trying a new tactic. It seemed like it almost would’ve worked. When it came to his friends, Luffy went between being sympathetic or 100% asshole. Sanji seemed to have at least gotten the sympathetic element down. He couldn’t tell what was being said from where he was, but the way it was going it almost seemed like it was on the fence. 

 

But then the odds seemed to shift into Luffy’s favor. Either Luffy was genuinely fooled by Sanji’s acting, or he was just playing along in this game he had no intention of losing. It was hard to tell with Luffy, but what wasn’t hard to tell was that he was winning this game with waterworks. Almost immediately after he broke them out Sanji caved. 

 

Sanji’s act wasn’t very convincing, but it was easy to tell that the moment just how much of an act it was. He went from an over the top mess to grumpily pushing Luffy out of the way and huffing around the kitchen. It was honestly kinda funny to watch. Zoro could see the moment that Sanji got to work, the facade faded and Luffy was back to his normal bouncy self. 

 

Now Zoro knew it was a trick. He didn’t know what to think, but he was weirdly impressed on how Luffy tricked Sanji. It almost made him debate whether or not to tell Sanji later that Luffy outsmarted him. He could almost imagine the flustered rage he’d feel, but Zoro wasn’t ready for what kind of tricks that he’d know Luffy would pull if Sanji found out. 

 

Luffy might not’ve been the brightest bulb, but sometimes he just surprised everyone with either some scheme or some little bit of wisdom. He was kinda hard to read, because you had to be ready for either something breathtakingly stupid, or surprisingly insightful and deep. Today it was something that was sneaky and Zoro had to give credit where it was due. 

 

Eventually Luffy left the kitchen and came over exactly like Zoro had predicted. Some Luffy patterns were just too predictable, and Zoro had been stuck with Luffy the longest and it’s the little things like that that you pick up on when you’re with them for so much time. Zoro made sure to move slightly to make sure that nothing was harmed in this latest nap. 

 

“Pretty impressive in there.” Zoro mumbled, keeping it just loud enough for Luffy to here. 

 

“Oh, you caught that?” Luffy looked up, his eyes peeking up from under the brim of his hat.

 

“Gotta say, I almost didn’t. If it weren’t for the fact that you dropped it the moment Sanji was too frazzled to notice, I probably wouldn’t have noticed at all.” 

 

“Must be getting rusty. Shishishishi.” 

 

“So how long could you pull stuff like that off?” Because now he was curious, and he had to know if something like this had happened to him. Luffy pulled it off almost seamlessly with Sanji, it was very possible he had done it to Zoro as well. 

 

“Zoro I’m the little brother. You don’t go through life being the baby brother and you don’t learn how to do stuff like that. Ace might’ve won every fight we had, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t make sad faces and trick him into sharing more meat than he wanted to.” Luffy beamed up with pride, and now Zoro really had no idea if Luffy had messed with him like that. 

 

But then Luffy abruptly froze, like he had remembered something really important that was forgotten about for a concerning amount of time. Luffy whipped around and put his hands on either sides of Zoro’s face and squished his face.

 

“Zoro!” He seemed excited about it, whatever it was.

 

“What.” His word barely understandable because his face was being pushed together by a devious manchild. 

 

“I should teach you how to do it!”

 

“Do what?”

 

“Be tricky!!”

 

“No.” He really should move Luffy’s hands, but he knew that it’d be a fight to keep them off because this was Luffy and he did what he wanted. 

 

“But just think of all the free booze you could get. I bet you’d be really good at it.” 

 

“Can I get a nap first?” Luffy wasn’t going to let go of this and he knew it.

 

“Yep!”

 

“Fine, whatever.”


	3. Chapter 3

He was going to be brutally honest. He didn’t want to do this. It was kinda embarrassing to do this, and he wasn’t really a fan of a lot of attention to begin with. He’d rather just live his life and watch his friends have a good time. He wouldn’t go out of his way to avoid it, but Zoro wasn’t going to actively seek it like a good amount of his crew would. Nothing wrong with it, just not his deal.

 

But he was stuck with captain’s orders. Wished that the orders he got weren’t stupid, but at least part of him knew that this was because Luffy trusted him to make actual decisions on his own and to not fuck them all over. At the same time he did hate the fact that as captain he used his power to do stupid shit like this. 

 

Nothing could be done but to just accept it. The faster he got it done, the faster it was over with and best case scenario he could just go get shitfaced after this and it’d be like nothing ever happened. Worst case scenario, he’d be forced to talk about feelings and he’d feel like a shit bag telling them this was all just a ploy to get booze. Especially since he knew Luffy wasn’t going to let himself get thrown under the bus. Not after what he saw last week. 

 

He’d wait until at least everyone was settled. Once food started, there was a chance that he could just fly under the radar in the panic and just cut his losses after because he had followed the rules and no one could fault him for that. He tried to use Luffy’s tricks but they just didn’t work oh well. That’s the way it was.

 

Watching Luffy bounce in his seat, he could only wonder if it mattered if he did it or not. He’d do it anyways because he was an honorable guy, but if he wasn’t bound to a code to listen to his captain even under stupid circumstances he could’ve totally lied. Odds were Luffy had moved onto bigger and stupider things by now and forgotten, because that’s just how things were. Zoro was still going to do it though.

 

He just had to lean on the table, block his eyes from everyone, and think of upsetting things. Things like seeing someone who looks exactly like his dead best friend and reopening that wound that’s been closed for ten or so years and not being strong enough to protect his friends. The trick was to make sure the tears were real, because that made them more believable. 

 

Well, Zoro couldn’t actually get himself to cry that way. He was upset, and it’d probably show in his voice so he’d have to go with tactic two and make a calculated risk and poke his one good eye. Not too hard, just enough to make it water. Then he had to blink it enough for it to really get going. 

 

It hadn’t gone the way he wanted it to go, because suddenly he could feel every eye at the table staring at him as the room got quiet enough to hear a pin drop on the other end of the ship. The question was: Did he dare look up and see the damage? Because it sounded like it was going to be bad. 

 

Things didn’t just get quiet on the ship like this unless things were really wrong. Some of the people there had seen him cry before. It wasn’t like this was some unheard of thing. It had happened before. 

 

But this was going to just be a moment where he bit the bullet and looked up at the damage he’d caused. This was the only way he’d actually get anywhere with this. This was just going to be yanking off the bandage. The faster he did it, the faster it was over. 

 

Looking up, the damage was as bad as he thought. First of all, he had made most of the crew cry. Luffy, Usopp, Chopper, Nami, Franky, and Brook were all crying, which was odd because Luffy was the one who put him up to all this. Sanji looked unsure of what to do with himself and just generally uncomfortable with the situation, which Sanji completely understood because he was there right there with him. Robin looked concerned for him and Zoro just felt like a total shit bag.

 

Robin moved spots so she was sitting down right next to him, and she put her actual hands on him. No hands were bloomed, these were the real deal and it was weird. 

 

“Zoro, are you alright?” He wasn’t, because this might’ve been the douchiest thing he had ever done.

 

“I’m just having a rough day.” His voice cracked a lot more than he meant it to, but there was fuck all he could do about that.

 

“Is there anything we can do to help?” 

 

“Maybe some booze.” If he was going to be a douche, he might as well go all in. He did this for the booze so he might as well get some. He was going to need it after this.

 

Sanji was the one to get up, but Zoro was pretty sure it was just because he wanted the hell out of there.

 

“Fine I’ll get you your shitty booze, just don’t fucking do this shit ever again, got it?” He wasn’t exactly sure what Sanji would do if Zoro were to ever cry, but Zoro knew it boiled down to fuck all but he just didn’t want to cry himself. Zoro nodded and wiped away the tear that had welled up and was left there for effect from when he poked himself in the eye. 

 

But out of the corner of his eye, he was pretty sure he could see Luffy both realizing what had happened, and being really proud of it happening. But It wasn’t going to happen again. Fuck that shit. 

 


End file.
